My Monthly Fuel Expense Is:

The peaks are with two bands, can we categorize it as: 

Between 1,000 - 2,000 Rs - mostly two wheeler, sometime car ?

Between 4,000 - 5,000 Rs - mostly car, sometimes two wheeler ?

After the fuel hikes and in anticipation of further hikes..this band might shift one level up for the second catgory(4000-5000 -> 3000-4000) listed above...I am trying for that myself!

Vasanth makes an important point.  Oil is a finite resource.  The proven reserves globally are about 850-1000 GB (billion barrels).  The world consumes about 30GB/year of which the US consumes about 7GB/year. 

Discoveries of oil peaked in the 1960s (the world used to find 3 barrels for every barrel used). That shifted to a 1:1 in the 80s and in the last 10 years we have been using 5 barrels for every barrel we find.  Many of the big producing countries are now in decline - the US(1970), Mexico, North Sea, Indonesia, Norway.   Many of the giant fields in Saudi (Ghawar), Kuwait have been producing oil for about 50 years now and flow rates are kept up by water injection.  Russia's production has hit a peak and may now be flat. 

India consumes about 1 Billion barrels of crude oil annualy and imports about 70-75% of its crude oil requirements.  Our oil import bill is in the range of $90Billion at today's rates.  Oil prices are not going south in a hurry.  But people don't care till it hits their wallets.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted "tight" supplies till 2013.  This same agency till 6 months back was giving a rosy forecast.  Oil production has remained stagnant from 2005 at about 86 million bpd.  Oil demand has been growing.  Exports (which really matter) have been declining as oil producers, flush with cash, are on a consuming spree.  All this does not bode well for the Indian economy,

Our government needs to have a strategic plan to ensure that oil is not wasted hauling 1200 kgs of metal with one human in it.  We need to price petrol in a way that forces conservation.  Diesel cars need to be taxed at source.  Else we face the prospect of oil companies going broke and petrol rationing.  And we face fiscal deficits that will push inflation even higher and the poor will suffer even more.

Money being spent on these fancy flyovers needs to go towards mass transit and bus infrastructure.  Else we will pay heavily for it in the next 5 years.

Srivathsa

This calls for policy/regulation changes. Diesel pricing is complex. We may argue that diesel engine is more efficient than petrol and hence shouldn't be discouraged. You can't have same fuel with differential pricing. It's not practical, esp. in India. Cheaper subsidized diesel meant for essential goods carrier would ultimately find its way to cars via grey market. Hence putting additional tax on diesel cars upfront is a better idea.

But more importantly than the above, govt. should seriously consider reducing taxes and levies heavily on hybrids and electric vehicles and completely do away tax on mass transport/public transport coaches/vehicles.

-- navshot

increasing the consumption from 15 kms/litre to 20-or even 30 kmpl to me sounds not drastic enought to make a change/difference. What we need to explore is alternative fuel technology.

Cars such as Honda's FCX. Renewable energy must be researched more. Such initiatives needs trong support from the govt in setting up fuel supply. To me this whole petroleum issue seems to be a world wide lobby!

No govt. is interested in solving the issue - they are merely postponing the worst - which gets worse and worse! They all seem to be "pitying" the car manafactrures, wooing the investment and dont care two hoots about the bigger problem. Have a look at Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth - its more of a Horror Film than a documentary!

If I were the govt these are some of the steps I would like to take:

• Set a minimum mileage per vehicle for each segement.
• Not subisides Fuel but instead use the money to build an alternative fuel public transport system. the Govt plays something like 20,000 crores as compensation to the oil companies. Image the no. of Metro rails possible with that money!
• Encourage Electric Vehicles, Hybrids, Alternative Fuel Cells....etc. Give them subisidy, tax exemption and maybe land to set up units.
• Set a research institute dedicated to studying areas of alternative fuels.

W've let this place burn for too long, its about time we did some serious fire fighting - thats if we want the next generation to live on earth!

SB,

I think your data points to the importance of car pooling and shared autos (e.g.)

A key point you miss is that buses turnover passengers; cars dont.  While at any point there may only be 30-40 passengers in a bus (BMTC normal buses do better for sure), people get on and off.  If there are 10 stops and just 4 people get on and off at each stop - you have doubled the total number of passengers hauled.  Good route planning with stops every 500m can get better utilization.

The other problem is that if everyone used this logic, the roads would get so crowded that the new diesel car would give only 12 km/litre (Shastri's picture tells a million words).  Autos give closer to 20-22 km/l based on my conversations with drivers.

In Bangalore, A/C buses are not that critical - 10months/12 the weather borders on blissful.  If roads are less crowded, normal buses can get upto 4.75-5 km/l.  If effectively 100 people use a bus in peak hour, we get close to 500 passenger-km/l.   

Srivathsa